Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Teens keep cosplaying as Holocaust victims on TikTok

Holocaust victim roleplay is emerging as a trend among teenage actors on the video social media platform TikTok, under the hashtag #holocaustchallenge.

“I was put in Auschwitz camp at 19 with my family,” says TikTok user @thatsnadia in one video, face made up with painted bruises. “We were forced to work, it was painful, exhausting. We were also tortured.”

Some of the users imagine themselves as Holocaust victims in the afterlife. “I died by gas chambers in Auschwitz,” said another, TikTok user @kyla.atkin, her face gleaming ghostly white.

Many of the videos are reactions to acting roleplay prompts, like “Jewish teenager gets to go to the future but gets taken back to the concentration camp,” or “it’s ww2 and a military officer finds a jewish woman hiding in the basement.” Some imagine time travel, being sent back in time to concentration camp, where they are sent to the gas chambers.

“It was December 1943. We thought we were safe, we thought we were hidden,” said TikTok user @cchynaa, staring at the camera. “I remember the screaming and the banging when they found us. I remember the cold, as they walked us through the icy streets, completely naked.” That video received over 50,000 likes.

Some go as far as using European city backgrounds; one person lip syncs, “You make me feel like I’ve been locked out of Heaven,” wearing a striped prisoner’s uniform.

Not everyone is on board with the trend. Twitter user @Mowgli_Lincoln shared a thread of these screenshotted videos, writing: “the holocaust is not some fun little aesthetic for people to dress up for and role play.”

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt is the Life section editor at the Forward. Find her on Twitter. and Instagram

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.